Thing One: As noted before, we now have front row seats to Trump’s attack on governing, the Constitution, his enemies, migrants, and the government protections built up over decades to protect us from the ravages of unrestrained capitalism, climate change, and globalized disease. The pundits have recognized that Trump’s aggressive efforts to see what he can get away with – the courts being the only potential obstacle – is an intentional effort to enlarge his power not by flaunting law and order but by bending it to his will.
The mostly unqualified sycophants with which he is seeking to stuff his cabinet will pass or not through the Senate – Hegseth squeaking by J.D. – and thus fully legally. As Jon Stewart recently noted, this is not fascism but entirely consistent with the 18th Century founding document – allowing a presidential monarchy – we seem to be stuck with. We will have to do something about that someday if we are to ever grow up. This bring me to ….
Thing Two: In the face of Trump flooding the field to keep everyone else off balance, the Democrats are either hiding, lost in a forest of self-analysis, or just plain waiting for the Trump chickens to come home to roost on all of those deluded people who voted for him. That is not much of a political party, more a herd of well-fed sheep. The Democrats need to find a way to address the issues that drove so many to place hope for a better life in Trump and the oligarch-loving Republicans amassed under the MAGA banner. This brings me to ….
Thing Three: The Democrats need, the country needs, to find a way to deal with the forces driving so many to feeling relatively deprived. All too many Americans feel that they and their children cannot reach, or maintain, the lifestyle of their own parents or grandparents. They are right to so believe.
The post-WWII economy of the Boomers peaked by the early ‘80s. Since then, inequality has been increasing while the Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats have favored capital over labor. Good paying union jobs gave way to low paying service sector work. Big capital fought off unions. The 21st Century has added further automation, now powered by AI, to further diminish the good paying working class jobs of the past. Health costs have risen, public schools struggle, drug use moved well beyond inner cities. Folks wonder what happened? So they look for those to blame – migrants, Jews, anyone different – and those to save them.
We need to face up to a few basics. We will never be a country full of high-paying work again. Tariffs won’t do it and build-it-here won’t do it. Most remaining (or recaptured) industry and many so called white-collar jobs will be done by machines and computers. For a while we may still need some skilled craftspeople like plumbers and electricians. But picking our crops, slaughtering our animals and rebuilding our outdated infrastructure will be done by machines and those migrants we say we don’t need. (No high paying jobs there.)
What is to be done? The Democrats will need to bite the bullet and revisit that approach long made anathema by the rich and their Republican servants: socialism. By which I mean, collecting substantial taxes from the obscenely rich and from big business, perhaps nationalizing fundamental platforms of the 21st Century economy such as Amazon and providing a guaranteed minimum income to everyone. This last would not be means tested or require looking for work and should be at least a few multiples of the basic poverty line. (Free healthcare, life-long education and varied public goods would supplement this.) We should, in other words, separate making and providing the goods we sell to ourselves and the world from the necessity to make them through human labor.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
4 comments:
We need a shift in what we value, respect and reward. Primary and secondary teachers, as one example, are obscenely undervalued and undercompensated -- and messed around -- in our present culture. There are a host of things humans can do better than machines. They involve caring for and protecting each other, giving meaning to each other's lives and making each other feel wanted and respected and needed.
Agree totally. These are among the public goods that should be supported, where necessary by government and public funding.
Messaging. Trump showed us that it is the message, not the substance that drive the narrative. They seem to share and use the same critical simple talking points and play to win at any cost to integrity, rational and reasonable behavior?
Organizing. In 1928, humorist Will Rogers said: “I am not a member of any organized party. I am a Democrat.” Does it still feel that way almost 100 years later where Democrats work to get along and make things better, while Republican (Trump) Party members play the long game at the state and federal levels to take over the judiciaries and legislatures?
The DNC just elected Ken Martin as the chair; a Minnesotan operative with a boundless energy and reputation as a knife fighter. I hope he picks up a gun and spends the next two years to take no prisoners in taking the House, then the next two years in taking the rest. I don’t think that’s enough without out-messaging and out-organizing the Republicans.
I think that Democrats are natural collaborators who work together for common positive outcomes in the essentials like health care, education, housing, a living wage, etc. They mistake that for organization because they accomplish things. Collaboration is not organization.
The Democrats must rethink how and what they message, and organize, organize, organize the people at the state and federal levels to work to win and speak with one voice.
I believe that once they focus on - and improve messaging and organization, the substance of their efforts will speak for itself.
I like your characterization of the Democrats as "natural collaborators," Michael. However they have often leaned too far to the right to "collaborate" with the capitalist elite. I would say instead that they are incrementalists who sometimes accomplish things that serve the non-elite. But you are dead on about their need to organize and message (once they have one).
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